7E7 Launches Boeing’s Comeback (2003)

With Boeing sitting on a backlog of commercial airplane orders worth $426 billion, it’s hard to believe that just a dozen years ago there were serious questions about whether the iconic aviation company had a future in the airliner business. 

With the airline industry mired in a historic downturn, employment at Boeing Commercial Airplanes dropped from 93,000 before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to just 55,000 at the end of 2003. The company had been unable to interest airlines in its proposal for a speedy but less efficient “Sonic Cruiser,” and its new hard-nosed CEO, Harry Stonecipher, seemed hell-bent on growing its defense and space businesses to lessen the company’s historic reliance on the commercial aircraft market.

So when Boeing’s board in December 2003 authorized the company to begin offering airlines a new mid-size jet, the 7E7 (later renamed the 787), the move was met in Seattle with both relief and jubilation. “After years of half starts, feints and head scratching, Boeing has a new airplane for sale,” transport editor Michael Mecham wrote in the Dec. 22, 2003 edition of Aviation Week. “Some employees, investors and airline executives have worried that Boeing had become so risk-averse that they questioned whether it would ever launch a new commercial program.”

The move positioned Boeing to capitalize on an explosion in demand for new passenger jets.  Envisioned to provide a 20% gain in efficiency, the 787 quickly became the fastest selling widebody airplane in history. But Boeing’s effort to incorporate cutting edge technologies at the same time it outsourced large portions of the development work to suppliers backfired when some of its partners proved unable to deliver. That led to repeated delays, which pushed the jet’s service entry back more than three years, to 2011.

Still, it’s undeniable that the 787 was the key to Boeing’s reinvigoration of its product line, which has allowed it to keep pace with its erstwhile competitor, Airbus. To date 1,142 787s have been ordered from 59 customers, and 354 of those have been delivered.

Read Boeing Bets Big on Long Haul, page 22

Read Boeing Bets Big on Long Haul, page 23 

Read Boeing Bets Big on Long Haul, page 24